Top 4 tech unicorns in APAC powered by Sendbird’s chat API

Sendbird is a tech startup first founded in Korea. We’ve since moved our headquarters to the Silicon Valley, but we’ve retained our R&D office in Seoul, Korea. Now we power conversation and live interactions for many stars and unicorns in tech from Asia & the Pacific (APAC).

Recently we have seen a lot of growth in APAC. We’re proud to have been able to help some of the most innovative industry leaders as the region and tech industry grows in Asia. We’re also delighted to introduce our promising customers, several amazing businesses in APAC, and share our experience partnering with them.

See the chat API features that power these businesses’ conversation.

GO-JEK: The UBER of Southeast Asia and Indonesia

On-demand ride hailing is taking off in Asia. Although many in the US might only be familiar with Uber and Lyft, there are 12 on-demand services taking off in Asia. You may have recently heard that Uber hired its first president for Indonesia and it’s no surprise: not only is GO-JEK a great ride-hailing service, but it actually supports more on-demand services than Uber.

GoJek is Indonesia’s largest ride hailing app and one of its most innovative on-demand service providers. It is also one of the most well-funded startups in Asia & Pacific, raising $1.7 billion from Tencent and Sequoia capital among others and making it one of the best known tech unicorns in APAC. Using Sendbird’s chat API and customer support solutions, GoJek leads Indonesia’s on-demand market, offering a truly wide-range of services from ride-hailing, grocery shopping, and pharmacy delivery to on-demand massages, stylists, and automotive repair.

Traveloka: The Multi-billion dollar Online Travel Agency

The travel and OTA market is expanding rapidly in Asia and US OTA companies like Priceline and Expedia have looked to expand their global reach to include Asia & Pacific. Priceline already expanded its OTA business to Agoda.com and Ctrip.com has an established presence in China.

Expedia recently invested $350 million in Traveloka, a fundraising round that valued Traveloka over $2 billion. Now Traveloka is Indonesia’a largest travel aggregator and it powers its customer service and counseling with Sendbird.

TMON (TicketMonster): Korea’s [Groupon + Amazon] in one

Bain & Company suggests that Southeast Asia will be a huge market for e-commerce. Live-commerce takes e-commerce and digital transformations a step further. It uses live video streaming and chat to create real-time interactions between e-commerce marketplaces and online shoppers. Since US’s live-commerce still centers around independent and amateur content makers, some of the biggest innovators in live-commerce make their home in Asia.

TMON (Ticket Monster), valued at roughly $2 billion, is one of Korea’s largest e-commerce businesses. It hosts a live-commerce service, TV-ON, with Sendbird’s chat API and boasts an almost unbelievable 21% conversion rate and 130x sales revenue compared to other e-commerce channels (link’s language is Korean)!

If you’d like to read more about TMON’s success and some key considerations for a successful conversational product, click here.

Nexon: World’s Top 10 Mega Gaming Publisher

Half of the top 10 gaming companies by revenue are based in Asia: Tencent, Sony, NetEase, Bandai Namco, and Nexon. Revenue in eSports is projected to double by 2020. With eSports gaining wildly in popularity, audience engagement and live interaction will become two of the industry’s KPIs.

Nexon is a $10 billion gaming house that hosts its eSports’ live and public chat with SendBird’s chat API on 4 different games. Nexon uses chat to engage its users, but it accomplishes this in a creative way. Over the course of a match, Nexon releases 5 tokens that viewers can accept through the chat interface, enticing viewers to stay longer and pay more attention to the game and chat. If you get over half the tokens, you can exchange them for in-game currency. In one gaming session with tens of thousands in live public chat, Nexon was able to increase audience engagement by 50%.

Conversational solutions support Asia & the Pacific’s growing tech

The numbers speak for themselves: in some cases, 21% sales conversion and 130x revenue or a 50% improvement in viewer engagement. No matter the industry and use-cases, if chat is implemented strategically and creatively, chat and messaging solutions can help support Asia and the Pacific’s rapidly growing tech market.